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Undercover cop posed as journalist to trick killer

Last September the OPP used a "new investigative strategy" to gather infomation on a suspect in a murder at Millhaven Penitentiary.

Doris Crispin holds a picture of her husband, murdered by a felon out on the streets on early release, and wonders why he had to die. (RICK EGLINTON / TORONTO STAR)

Michael Crispin. (HANDOUT PHOTO)

By Betsy PowellCourts Bureau

Sat., Aug. 28, 2010

The young and aspiring journalist used some ego-stroking in the letter that coaxed a con into telling his life story.

In her letter to the double murderer, she suggested she could secure his place in history and the book deal would be sweetened with financial compensation.

She also stated she was inspired to write a book after reading Con Games: The Truth about Canada’s Prisons, written by Michael Harris in 2002.

But the con was, in fact, being conned. The would-be author was an undercover police officer.

It was part of a “new investigative strategy” the Ontario Provincial Police alluded to in a March press release announcing they had laid a first-degree murder charge against Phillip Vince for the 1999 cyanide poisoning of a fellow inmate at Millhaven Penitentiary.

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But that tactic of a police officer impersonating a journalist will be the subject of a court challenge this fall by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and RTNDA Canada, the Association of Electronic Journalists.

Vince, 52, is serving two life sentences for crimes a judge called “senseless and despicable” — the unrelated execution-style murders of a Toronto railway worker and a teenage runaway in the winter of 1985.

He became eligible to apply for full parole this year.

But members of the Joint Forces Penitentiary Squad, made up of officers with the OPP and Kingston police, had long suspected Vince was behind the death of 24-year-old Scott Barnett. He died in Kingston General Hospital on July 15, 1999, a day after collapsing in the maximum security prison’s yard.

The case remained unsolved for many years and was reactivated after some “new information” came forward in 2006, OPP Det.-Insp. Dave Quigley, the officer in charge of the case. Laying charges in cold cases is always gratifying, particularly penitentiary homicides which are extraordinarily difficult to solve. He declined to comment on the nature of the investigation itself.

But last September, months after mailing Vince the introductory letter, the undercover officer travelled to Saskatchewan Penitentiary, near Prince Albert, where he had been transferred in 2003. Behind prison walls, she sat down for what would be the first of multiple meetings with the 5-foot-11, dark-haired, brown-eyed prisoner, his 250-pound body a mass of muscles from 25 years of pumping iron in prison gyms.

Wary at first, Vince peppered the “journalist” with questions. Would she tape the interviews? Yes, but any recordings would only be used for the purposes of writing a book. Who was her publisher? She couldn’t say because he might do an end-run and approach the publisher directly, cutting her out. But the publisher is “excellent,” she assured him.

Was she subject to “journalistic privilege” and therefore couldn’t be legally compelled to testify in court? Yes, she said, although no such designation exists. How much would he be paid? A lump sum upon publication of the book, not to exceed $20,000.

They both signed a written agreement outlining these and other terms.

Then Vince started opening up to the undercover officer, describing growing up in Oshawa and Ajax, how he went from committing break and enters to murder, and eventually, according to police, implicating himself in the 1999 homicide. He allegedly explained how to make cyanide from apple seeds and apricot pits and is also alleged to have supplied a motive.

But Vince’s lawyer Bernard O’Brien said his client will be pleading not guilty, adding: “From his perspective, he's looking forward to explaining how his comments were taken out of context.”

The veteran defence lawyer said while it’s not unusual for police to go undercover to try to elicit confessions — posing as gangsters to lure mobsters to admit to murder, for example — it is highly unusual to have an officer impersonate a journalist.

“It’s a novel approach not yet tested by the courts,” he said.

Kelly Toughill, director of the School of Journalism at University of King’s College in Halifax, says the police impersonation of journalists has an impact on the public’s willingness to trust the profession.

“It really undermines the ability of journalists to do the kind of serious, important stories that society needs to thrive, particularly that democracy needs to thrive,” she said.

“If every time someone in a marginal position is approached by a reporter thinks ‘I wonder if this is a cop,’ then you’re not going to get stories that led to the arrest of Robert Pickton,” the B.C. pig farmer. Prior to a series of newspaper stories based on interviews with sex workers familiar with the increasing incidence of missing woman, police denied the existence of a serial killer.

In the case of inmate Barnett’s death, a second man, James MacLean, 24, of Peterborough, was also charged with first-degree murder in June. MacLean’s lawyer, Daniel Brown, said courts must be “extremely cautious when relying on evidence obtained under false pretenses.”

“This is especially true in circumstances such as this where a convicted killer, with nothing to lose, makes glorified statements with the hopes of gaining fame and fortune.”

MacLean has been out of trouble for many years and maintains his innocence in the face of this “heinous allegation levied against him.”

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Hearing the name Phillip Vince again has been a shock to relatives of Michael Crispin and has opened agonizing memories.

While driving home to Etobicoke in a blizzard early on March 5, 1985, Crispin, who was 35, stopped on Jameson Ave. after Vince, John Sarson and Michelle Racky flagged him down seemingly for help getting their car started.

Crispin had just finished work at a Parkdale rail yard and was acting as a Good Samaritan, as one judge described him.

“Michael was trying to help these people and they overpowered him,” recalls his widow Doris Crispin. The couple had married in 1978.

The three force Crispin back inside his Lincoln Continental and drove away. “A man heard his screams and ran to help but they took off,” Doris said. The witness heard Crispin say, “I want to live.”

They drove to a bank machine where they withdrew $200 using Crispin’s card.

Vince eventually admitted he shot Crispin in the back of the head with a sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun and left him in a field north of Whitby. His body wasn’t discovered for six days.

Vince and the others were arrested almost immediately. At the time of the murders, Vince had numerous convictions for violent offences and was out on mandatory supervision.

Doris was left to raise their 4-year-old daughter Julia alone.

A kind and passionate man, Crispin adored his daughter, Doris said. “He would make her good, nutritional meals, take her to the park, to the bank, to his buddy’s house, anywhere and never once did I hear him say ‘I have to stay home and babysit’ like some men do.”

All these years later, the pain still sears. “You never really get over that,” she said. “Phillip Vince is just scum to me.”

Shortly before the trial in 1987, Vince was charged with killing Tiffany Ann Antel, a 16-year-old girl who had run away from her Scarborough home.

Vince killed the teenager “because he believed she was a police informant,” the prosecutor told court in 1987. “He had given her information about drugs and guns, and he believed she had gone to the police.” He also confessed because he wanted a better cell at the Whitby jail while awaiting trial in the Crispin case.

Police returned Vince to Ontario earlier this year. A preliminary hearing is scheduled in Napanee court in February.

Mr. Big sting

Police forces across Canada have employed the controversial technique known as the Mr. Big sting.

In fact, Phillip Vince was so familiar with the method that when he found out the true identify of his would-be biographer he referred to her as “Mrs. Big.” Critics argue the technique entraps targets with the lure of making money.

Other examples:

— An undercover officer pretended to be a major organized crime player in an attempt to get a murder suspect to confess to a stabbing death. Mr. Big asked the suspect “to be completely honest about his past” and offered to help make the charges go away if he knew “100 per cent” of what happened. The suspect, 17 at the time of the killing, eventually admitted to the crime. Defence told the jury the confession amounted to the “braggadocio of a young man with a coloured past trying to secure favour with Mr. Big and must be viewed through that prism.”

— A target in the slaying of four RCMP officers in March 2005 near the Alberta hamlet of Mayerthorpe was drawn into an elaborately staged plot that involved a bogus beating, pretend gun running, cigarette smuggling and diamond stealing. One Mountie played the role of Santa at a fake company Christmas party.

— A Mr. Big sting closed the case on the murder of Ajax security guard Roy Jones, who was gunned down in Whitby in 2001 just days before he was due to testify at a home invasion trial. Men who looked like bikers moved next door to a suspect living in a Brantford apartment. In reality, they were Durham police officers. The suspect felt he had to impress them and told them he had been involved in a murder.

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